This invention relates to an air cleaner for a heavy duty vehicle.
Heavy duty air cleaners, of the type used on large trucks, are relatively large and bulky and must often be located in inconvenient locations for servicing. Furthermore, it is often necessary to service these heavy duty air cleaners more often than automotive air cleaners are serviced, since these heavy duty vehicles are often operated in an adverse environment. Air cleaners are serviced by removing the throwaway filter element and installing a new one. Furthermore, the air cleaners used on many vehicles are provide with a pair of inlets, one of which is connected to communicate warm, underhood engine air to the air cleaner, and the other used to communicate the cooler, heavier, ambient air to the air cleaner. A mechanism is provided to open one of the inlets when the other one is closed. The air valve is often mounted on the removable closure of the air cleaner, through which replacement elements cartridges are installed. However, the air valves in prior art devices were often hard to connect to the inlet tube communicating them with the underhood engine air, since it was difficult to install the bolts which hold the air cleaner to the air valve swivel housing after the latter were removed in order to replace the cartridge. Because of the inconvenient location and the interference of the air valve housing, replacing the filter element in many prior art heavy duty air cleaners was often a tedious, relatively difficult task.